FUSE Grantee: Clark County, Department of Social Service

About the Grant

CSH is leveraging generous support from the Open Society Foundations and Capital One to offer communities grant funding as well as expert advice and assistance to plan and implement the evidence-based Frequent User Systems Engagement (FUSE) model targeting frequent users of the criminal justice and homeless systems.

Geographic Focus

Clark County, Nevada

Why FUSE for Clark County?

The Clark County Detention Center (CCDC) is located in Las Vegas, Nevada and is the largest jail system in the state. In 2014, there were approximately 60,000 arrestees booked into the detention center and the facility currently manages a total inmate population well in excess of 4,000 where CCDC’s maximum capacity at this time is 4,064. A trend of an increase in the inmate population by 12% from 2013 to 2014, the increase in the average daily population at 3,907, and average length of stay at record highs reporting at 23.3 days, has placed CCDC in a state of crisis. CCDC must reduce its jail population by no less than 20%.

FUSE is the right solution because of the lack of comprehensive cross-sector data analysis of the frequent user population. To address jail overcrowding and frequent users of crisis and high cost systems, Clark County needs to understand who the target population is, their impact to the system, what services are needed in order to break the cycle of recidivism, and frequent use.

The evidence based practices of a data-driven intervention with an understanding of housing capacity building are the rational for a CSH FUSE project. Leveraging a network of community partners throughout the country who are engaged in similar efforts of breaking the cycle of incarceration and homelessness among individuals with complex behavioral health challenges are among the many reasons why FUSE is the right initiative.

Clark County's Goals

The goals of the project are to evaluate existing intervention strategies to develop a comprehensive plan that encompasses a needs assessment, strengthens the relationships between collaborative partners to address data sharing challenges, and frames the groundwork for implementing and testing strategies to develop a data matching system to track frequent users.